Windows Cleanup Guide

House Cleaning for your Computer:

Just like your house needs cleaning on a regular basis so does your PC. Most users completely overlook cleanup of their PC. Now we are not talking about disassembly of your tower or laptop to clean the hardware, in this guide we are speaking about housecleaning of the operating system. Following a regular cleanup of your PC has proven beneficial effects on productivity and long term usability of your computer.

If you are anything like me your desktop looks like a cluttered mess of files and folders. You may not even know what some of these files are or what they belong to. We are going to help you cleanup this mess and get your PC working smoothly again. Together we are going to take a peek under the hood of your OS and cleanup the mess that Windows leaves behind during normal operation.

Why Most People Don't Clean:

Most users don't clean due to one of the following reasons:

Fear of losing or accidental deletion of crucial files

Fear of harming your Operating System by accident

Lack of Time

A misunderstanding of the benefits of cleanup

Current Operating System is slow and cleanup will consume a lot of time

Of all of these reasons probably the most applicable is the objection to the time it will take to clean up your computer because the computer is already slow. We have encountered this many times so it will be the first thing we address in this guide. There is an easy way to speed up even the cleanup process which we will walk you through. As for the other objections as long as you stick to the steps in this guide your chances of accidentially deleting critical data or harming the operating system are minimal.

Benefits of Cleanup:

Using this guide to clean up your operating system will result in several benefits. The immediate benefit will be less errors and a smoother running system. Less obvious benefits include; faster opening of your files and programs, less program errors and crashes, and an overall healthier system.

What you will need:

Before you begin you need to understand that the cleanup process will take a considerable amount of time depending on the current health of your system, speed of your processor, hard drive, and other potential problems that may have become embedded in your operating system over time. We suggest that you have at least 2 hours to walk through the steps in this guide.